The really mean season has begun in Republican politics.
Still smarting from negative ads used against in him Iowa, Newt Gingrich is firing back with the toughest language used yet in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, and lumping Mitt Romney in with “rich people figuring out clever ways to loot a company.”
The former House of Representatives Speaker is getting help in his bid to undermine Mr. Romney from a so-called super political action committee that supports him. The group, called Winning the Future, has launched a 30-minute video blasting Mr. Romney’s role at Bain Capital, the Boston-based private equity firm he ran until 1999.
The super PAC, reportedly financed by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is also pumping $3.4-million (U.S.) into new television ads to begin airing Wednesday in South Carolina, which holds its GOP primary on Jan. 21.
The Palmetto State has a reputation for dirty politics, with the 2000 GOP primary there between John McCain and George W. Bush setting a new benchmark for nastiness. And with Mr. Gingrich’s prospects fading in New Hampshire, which holds its GOP primary on Tuesday, the ex-speaker appears set to make a last stand in South Carolina.
Mr. Romney is all but certain to come out on top in New Hampshire and a CNN poll Friday showed him surging in South Carolina, too. It put Mr. Romney at 37 per cent among likely GOP primary voters in the Palmetto State. Mr. Gingrich plummeted in the survey to 18 per cent from 43 per cent a month earlier.
Mr. Gingrich, who has repeatedly promised to stay positive while his rivals duke it out in the gutter, has now included an attack on Mr. Romney’s business background in his stump speech.
He invokes a medical diagnostics company that cut its U.S. workforce by 1,700 after Bain invested in it during the 1990s. Mr. Gingrich has singled out the company, Dade Behring, as an example of Wall Street capitalism gone awry.
“We find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” Mr. Gingrich said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Gingrich super PAC touts the 30-minute video, entitled King of Bain, as “a film about one raider and his firm and how they destroyed the dream for thousands of Americans and their families.”
Mr. Romney, who has touted his business experience as the main reason he would be a good president, has now moved to counter his corporate raider image. On the campaign trail in New Hampshire, he has taken to explaining his brand of venture capitalism.
“We got money from other people and we would use that to help start businesses or sometimes acquire businesses that were in trouble or not doing so well and then try and make it better or get the businesses to grow,” he said on Sunday. “And when you have other people’s money and your own invested in something you’re very careful with it.”
Though he grew up wealthy – his father ran American Motors and ran for president in 1968 – Mr. Romney is also suggesting he feared for his own job at times.
“I know what it’s like to worry whether you’re going to get fired. There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip,” he said.
Mr. Romney acknowledges that some of the companies Bain invested in cut jobs or went bankrupt. But he insists the firm’s overall record of job creation has been positive. He regularly cites Staples, Sports Authority and Domino’s Pizza as three companies that created more than 100,000 in net new jobs after Bain transformed them.
Most of those jobs were created after Mr. Romney left Bain, however.
